Marathi playwright and Marxist intellectual G. P. Deshpande turns to India's ancient past to pinpoint the historical moment of empire in the context of the history of the empire. He sees in Chandragupta the ideal vessel to carry out his theories of state, and ruthlessly manipulates his young disciple to fulfill his grand vision of an all-powerful empire, the first centralized state.

This cycle of three plays deals with the impact on human beings, and their relationships, of the collapse of the Communist ideal, and the vacuum left by the loss of belief.

G. P. Deshpande is a Marxist scholar, an academic, and a widely produced and translated playwright.